You know at least half the people over there had this thought cross their minds, "Shit, I hedged my bets wrong"

Hedging the bet was easy. I just hung around on the west side of a time zone division, watching to see whether anything happened on the east side. If people had started going up, I would have had an hour to get to church and get saved.

I mean come on, the whole thing is basically a set of the biggest active volcanoes on the whole fault line, with some grass on them.I say "some grass", because the rest is still dead land from the last giant magma flow.

Random side note: her name is Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. Do you know the proper way to address her?

"Jóhanna".

You similarly address your teachers, elders, etc by first name. Even phone books in Iceland are sorted by first name. The "last name" is a patronymic -- "Sigurðardóttir" literally means that her father's name was Sigurðar.

You've got to remember that they're descended from the Vikings. If you look at the syllables in Vatnajokull, they're all something you could get out between sword swings. Evolution would have taken its course and all longer syllables would have died out.

Come on, why 'Colbert' is pronounced as 'Col-bear'? Or what about this 'th' sound in general? It's ridiculous!

Names starting 'w' ('William', 'Watson') are laughable and ambiguous - the first sound can not be adequately transcribed in Russian, it's either hard 'w' (as in 'water') or clear 'u'. Wouldn't it better if everyone just used perfectly serviceable Russian names like Tatyana or Fyodor?

I take it you already knowOf tough and bough and cough and dough?Others may stumble, but not you,On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,To learn of less familiar traps?Beware of heard, a dreadful wordThat looks like beard and sounds like bird,And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -For goodness sake don't call it deed!Watch out for meat and great and threat(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,Nor both in bother, broth in brother,And here is not a match for thereNor dear and fear for bear and pear,And then there's dose and rose and lose -Just look them up - and goose and choose,And cork and work and card and ward,And font and front and word and sword,And do and go and thwart and cart -Come, come, I've hardly made a start!A dreadful language? Man alive!I'd mastered it when I was five!

I know. However, some words are pronounced this way ('rapport', for example).

Also, this tendency of English to borrow spelling _and_ pronunciation from other languages had been driving me crazy when I was learning it. On the other hand German (which has very consistent transcription of words) was much easier to learn.

Spelling was deregulated until roughly Coleridge's time. Thus Shakespeare spelt his name quite a few different ways.

Eventually, there was a big move to standardize English spelling. Rather than adopt a simple phonetic system, the academics chose to use the phonetic system of the root word. If the word is Germanic, in origin, you use a Germanic inspired phonetics. If it's French, in origin, you use a French inspired phonetic system. Greek? Latin? Guess what, there's more systems. Sucks, doesn't it?

Oh, and Dutch printers were some of the first big printers of English books, so sometimes a bit of Dutch crept in.

Why does Icelandic seem so weird to so many people here? It's more closely related to English than, say, Spanish. Norse branched off from the west Germanic languages (from which English mostly descended) around 200 AD (although the split started a few thousand years earlier). Icelandic is very similar to Old Norse.

Vatnajökull is (in typical Icelandic fashion) the not-very-creatively-named "Water Glacier". Is it really that hard to see how "Vatn" and "Water" are related words? It's even easier to

Germanic languages split into three somewhere around North Germany/South Scandinavia: East, West and North, but East Germanic languages later died out.

English is close to Icelandic and Danish, because Denmark conquered and settled England for a century or so around 1000AD, straightening out most of the grammatics of verbs (only the am/are/is separation survived), setting the names of the week-days, introducing danish derived names for life and

Old Norse (or more accurately, Proto-Norse) is the origin point of the North Germanic languages. Hence, it branched off from the West Germanic languages when each went their separate ways (aka, were no longer mutually intelligible)

English has a number of Norse-origin loanwords (several hundred), but has more in common through the original Germanic connection.

With the world economy the way it is right now, it's hard to do a quality Rapture on the limited budget that God can afford, what with his credit rating in the toilet, and all.

It's all His fault! He could've just bought that 1-bedroom house in Flushing (J-Dawg got His right hand and they can share the flatscreen, so no need for 2), but He just had to take out the jumbo morg on that crib with the pearly gates. Our God is an idiot.

Not only those people give asylum to known subversive people (such as Bobby Fischer) but with their volcano eruptions they are speeding up glaciers melting, causing people to believe in global warming. And whenever they run out of money because they can't do proper banking they make deals with the communists.

If they could send the fumes over Libya it could cripple the army and help the revolution - but no, they prefer bothering the good people who are planning a trip to Europe.

(Days like this one, I feel like I could do a pretty decent job at Fox news).

You fool, hot babes don't play chess, they are too busy posing for cheap t-shirts ads, wearing headsets (see http://www.headsethotties.com/ [headsethotties.com]) and/or using their charms to make people sign waivers when they get caught in lousy hidden camera pranks. Duh.

The entire country pretty much runs on geothermal and hydroelectric power.

There are bathable hot springs.

The word geyser comes from Icelandic.

The whole country is snuggled up against the Arctic circle, but the jet stream keeps it from getting unpleasantly cold. In summer it can get quite toasty, actually. (And from June through August the sun dips below the horizon, but it never gets really dark.) In winter, you can see northern lights in the afternoon.

As a Norwegian I found the movie Thor quite interesting (: It was sort of neat how they refurbished the old cosmology of the norse mythology with modern day elements. Apart from the annoying pronunciation of scandinavian words ("We're going to Jotunheim!" which is an actual place [wikipedia.org] quite close to where I grew up) it was fun.

Those who like the movie might enjoy taking a peek at the actual mythology [wikipedia.org] (:

Every time there's a volcanic eruption we are reminded by anti-volcanics just how dangerous volcanos are, that even with really thick gloves lava is simply too hot to handle, and no amount of safety regulations will mitigate the mortal danger they pose. When will society wise up and realize volcanos are far too unpredictable? Even if there weren't eruptions, no amount of science or development is going to make them economically viable.

This is exactly the sort of anti-volcanic rhetoric I'd expect from the unwashed masses. This volcano was built using plans from three generations ago. Todays volcano's are far safer and far less likely to erupt in such an unpredictable fashion. Your are glossing over the fact that this volcano has just endured a rapture and is only blowing a small quantity of ash. The design specifically stated that the volcano would require some additional re-enforcements before the rapture came but these were never done owing to budget constraints, so it's hardly fair to judge all volcano's on the poor maintenance of this one case.

This. We have had no new volcanoes in the US for decades. The ones we have are getting quite old, but have been operating safely - there have only been minor incidents and occasional loss of life. Instead of learning from the mistakes of other countries (Look at Krakatoa or Pompeii) and having safe volcanoes, they refuse to allow any new volcanoes at all. Meanwhile, earthquakes kill far more people, but we do nothing about them!

Has there or has there not been an increase in weather and seismic events on the planet of late? Starting as early as hurricane katrina, the frequency and severity of such events seem to be increasing. Of course it could be that the news is making a much bigger deal than ever before and I never noticed before and now take more notice of these things. So I wonder if there isn't some sort of data which could be made into a larger overall picture of what has been happening and how severe the events have bee

Of course it could be that the news is making a much bigger deal than ever before and I never noticed before and now take more notice of these things.

Yes.

As the world's population increases, it becomes more and more likely that a natural disaster will strike a populated area. Corollary to that, as technology advances, it becomes more and more likely that there will be video of a natural disaster for news services to splash all over the TV/website.

At least quote the WHOLE sentence will ya? "weather AND seismic events." You know? As in "weather events and seismic events" combined for efficient and meaningful sentence construction? And it was implied that I was talking about disasterous weather events, not seasonal rain or clear skies.

It has been recorded that the temperature of the oceans have increased. It has been recorded that there has been an increase in seismic activity over the past 10 years when compared against the previous 10. So maybe

After the eruption of Eyajawhatever people were theorizing that it would be followed by an eruption of Katla [wikipedia.org] based on records of past eruptions. But instead of Katla, Grimsvotn lit off instead. I wonder if there's any relation between the two, and if so if this means that the pressure has been relieved and Katla isn't going to do anything, or if we're building up to a spectacularly huge Katla eruption,

Grímsvötn has been erupting semi-regularly for decades; in the last twenty years there have been eruptions in 1996, 1998, 2004, and now 2011. While long-term volcano prediction is more of an art than a science, there's no particular reason to believe that this eruption is related to either the Eyjafjallajökull eruption or to the still-apparently-quiescent (keep your fingers crossed) Katla. Grímsvötn is actually quite a distance from Katla: roughly 150 km. Eyjafjallajökull is much closer to Katla (just 30 km) and the initial smaller eruption last year (on Fimmvörðuháls) was nearer still.

Oooh, someone who knows their Icelandic geography and actually types their accents, umlauts, and eths;) I'm actually hoping to hike Fimmvörðuháls in July. It should be pretty neat, seeing the lava that móði and magni laid down fresh over the trail.

I have never seen a volcano smoke. Ash, rocks, mud, steam, noxious gases yes, but no smoke.You want smoke you gotta burn something.(maybe the volcano came up thru a coal bed???) (no coal that I know of in Iceland).

Written from the inside the ash cloud, Reykjavik
For those of you who are interested there are a few streams online of the volcano and surroundings. These are being set up so they are not all functional at this moment. Also dont expect to see much in all the webcams when the wind is blowing from certain directions.
The ash cloud actually reached Reykjavík 26 hours after the start of the eruption, which is much fast than last summer during the eruption in Eyjafjöll.
I will have to give you a few

Written from the inside the ash cloud, Reykjavik
For those of you who are interested there are a few streams online of the volcano and surroundings. These are being set up so they are not all functional at this moment. Also dont expect to see much in all the webcams when the wind is blowing from certain directions.
The ash cloud actually reached Reykjavík 26 hours after the start of the eruption, which is much fast than last summer during the eruption in Eyjafjöll.
I will have to give you a few pointers in icelandic since the english version does not have a direct link to the webcams.
Webpage:
http://live.mila.is/ [live.mila.is]
"Vefmyndavélar" means webcams so click that link.
Currently the bottom three streams are of the volcanoe.
"Grímsvötn" is the volcanic system
"Hvannadalshnjúkur" is the mountain not far from Grímsvötn.
And finally a little extra treat, a time vs richter map of the eartquakes in the area
Again "Vatnajökull" is the glacier that Grímsvötn are in so you can click that for a more detailed map.
Have fun.

I don't see how Iceland has anything to do with your involvement in the Cold War. Or was your goal to change from a discussion of a dispute between Iceland and the UK into a dispute between the UK and the US in order to avoid discussing your long history of (over) exploiting the resources of a poorer country which couldn't defend itself?

Also, Iceland is pissed, because as they were the only ones to undergo rapture, they will be the only ones to undergo the end of the world with its assorted plagues and large parts of the popuation dying.

As said in Revelation 8:7ff. (2011 Post-Icelandic Rapture Bible):
7The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon Iceland; and a third part of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
8And the second angel sounded and, as it were,